This section describes the growth of the hero’s soul. The composer uses thematic material from Don Juan, Also sprach Zarathustra, Tod und Verklärung, Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel’s lustige Streiche, Guntram, Macbeth, and his song, “Traum durch die Dämmerung.” Jean Marnold claims that there are twenty-three of these reminiscences, quotations, which Strauss introduces suddenly, or successively, or simultaneously, “and the hearer that has not been warned cannot at the time notice the slightest disturbance in the development. He would not think that all these themes are foreign to the work he hears, and are only souvenirs.”
The Hero’s Escape from the World, and Conclusion
The world is still cold. At first the hero rages, but resignation and content soon take possession of his soul. The bluster of nature reminds him of his old days of war. Again he sees the beloved one, and in peace and contemplation his soul takes flight. For the last time the hero’s theme is heard as it rises to a sonorous, impressive climax. And then is solemn music, such as might serve funeral rites.
IGOR FEDOROVITCH
STRAVINSKY
(Born at Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, on June 5, 1882)
As for Stravinsky, we personally prefer the Stravinsky of the Sacre du Printemps to the Stravinsky who of late has been attempting to compose in the manner of Bach. To begin with, we do not hear music now with the ears of the earlier centuries, and the old idiom today has no pertinence except when it has been handed down to us by a master of it, who broke through the idiom and made a universal language of it for many years to come. Stravinsky’s feeble echo is simply dull, boresome. His “Muscovism” is greatly to be preferred.
SUITE FROM “L’OISEAU DE FEU” (THE FIRE-BIRD)
A Danced Legend
I. Introduction: Kastcheï’s Enchanted Garden and Dance of the Fire-Bird II. Supplication of the Fire-Bird III. The Princesses Play with the Golden Apples IV. Dance of the Princess IVa. Berceuse V. Infernal Dance of All the Subjects of Kastcheï VI. Finale
In the summer of 1909 Diaghilev asked Stravinsky to write a ballet founded on the old Russian legend of the Fire-Bird. The score was ready in May, 1910. The scenario was the work of Fokine.
The first performance of L’Oiseau de Feu, a Conte dansé, in two scenes, was at the Paris Opéra on June 25, 1910. The Fire-Bird, Tamara Karsavina; The Beautiful Tsarevna, Mme Fokina; Ivan Tsarevitch, Fokine; Kastcheï, Boulgakov. Gabriel Pierné conducted. The stage settings were by Golovine and Bakst. Balakirev had sketched an opera in which the Fire-Bird was the central figure, but nothing came of it. Kastcheï (or Kostcheï) is the hero of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Kastcheï the Immortal: an Autumn Legend, produced at the Private Opera, Moscow, in 1902. He also figures as “the man-skeleton” in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mlada, a fairy opera-ballet (St. Petersburg, 1893) and, by implication, Moussorgsky’s symphonic poem, A Night on Bald Mountain.